Selection Sets Dialog

New dialog that allows the creation of selection sets that are not affected document structure.

Text

Font Features

It is now possible to take advantage of OpenType tables to select alternative glyphs from a font. Note that browser support is still limited. Inkscape must also be linked with a recent version of the Pango library.

Vertical Text

Support for vertical text layout has been improved.

The default behavior for Latin bases glyphs has been changed. They are now rotated sideways as required by the SVG 1.1 standard.

Support for the CSS 3 'text-orientation' property has been added. (Note that this property is not yet fully supported by browsers.)

The CSS 3 values for the 'writing-mode' property are supported in rendering. Saving still uses the deprecated SVG 1.1 values.

Accessibility

Converting text to a path will save the text in the 'aria-label' attribute. This is useful for accessibility and could eventually be used by Inkscape to reconstruct the text.

Live Path Effects

Now some suitable LPE's are applied to clips and mask.
Helper lines come again to live
Added to pen/pencil shape combo box the option to add a bend path directly

Transform by two points

Transform a element by two control points. You can position the control points by bounding box or by original path node index.
Thanks Ivan Louette for the idea of the effect.

Work on paths, shapes and groups with less power.

Allow snapping of both control points

Allow fix angle or distance.

Elastic mode to simulate a flex path

From original width, set the control points based on bounding box

File Format Support

The default PostScript level for exporting from the command line changes from 2 to 3 (consistent with the user interface PS exporter which defaults to level 3). Level 3 is required for gradient support.

Plotter Driver

Multiple Pens

Create a layer for every pen to use and move the corresponding drawings into it

Name the layer with a title like "Pen 1" or "MyLayerName Pen 1", where the number corresponds to the pen number the plotter should use

The layer name always overrides the standard pen setting in the plot menu

Serial Connection

The connection settings now allow you to specify rarely used serial connection settings like byte size, stop bits and parity. Most plotters use the default settings, so only change these if you know what you are doing.

HPGL Export

The HPGL export (File -> Save as -> HP Grafics Language file) has now the same multiple pens feature as the #Plotter Driver.

HPGL Import

The HPGL import (File -> Open -> Select .hpgl file) can now import multiple pens into corresponding layers, see #Plotter Driver for more information.

PDF Import

The image 'interpolate' value is now used to determine how to display bitmaps (interpolated or blocky).

Miscellaneous Improvements

Arrange > Restack has new options to reverse and shuffle the z-order of selected objects.

Render > Random Tree has new option to omit redundant segments.

Visualize Path > Measure Path has additional text layout options.

Other user interface

Node Snapping

Snapping in the node tool has been improved:

When double clicking to insert new nodes, the position of these new nodes will snap to for example path intersections and to path-guide intersections

When grabbing a segment of a path and dragging it to deform it, the pointer will now snap

Checkerboard Background

It is now possible to use a checkerboard background when editing. This allows one to clearly see the transparency of objects.

New dependencies

The Paintbucket and Trace Bitmap tools now use an external copy of the Potrace library, which is available in many Linux distributions or can be obtained from http://potrace.sourceforge.net

Bug fixes

Rendering of the Component Transfer filter primitive has been corrected.

Units are now recognized in the text and tspan 'x', 'y', 'dx', and 'dy' attributes.